Brothers Together
by Gemini Star01
Summary: TTGDCU crossover Robin finds himself facetoface with a strange boy who bears his name and may or may not play a pivitol role in his future. Even if the faces aren't familiar, maybe they can still help each other...
1. Ripples in the Water

**Various timeline notes: **This is a crossover between the current DC-Universe continuality and the "Teen Titans Go!" animated TV series. I know that the Robin in TTG has never actually revealed his "secret identity" or even been referred to as such, but most sources point to him being an alternate version Dick Grayson, the first Robin, and this plays a big point in the story. I'm going to be explaining both Dick and Tim's origins, so if you're not familiar with either one, no worries.

Takes place mid-series for TTG, sometime after the defeat of Trigon. For the DCU, it occurs directly after the "Identity Crisis" incident.

There is no slash. Just kinda sweet brotherly stuff. In the DCU, they _are_ legally brothers.

Enjoy.

**_Disclaimer: _**_I own nothing. DC owns everything. They may be abusing their Death Stick privileges recently, but they still own it all. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 1: Ripples in the Water**

As a general rule, Robin did not keep many personal items in his room at Titans Tower.

Sure, he had all of the comforts one would expect of your average teenage superhero, such as nice bed and an up-to-date computer and a closet for his clothes and costumes. Most of the walls were hidden behind large bookcases, laden down with the heavy hard-backed tomes that he liked to study. There were a few small things here and there that openly announced whose room it was – most in the form of R-shaped bookends and basic decorations on lampshades – but there was nothing in that room that was of any real value to him or to anyone else. His trophies of victory were displayed with all of the others' in their hall of fame downstairs, and he had always made it a policy to deny himself the personal "creature comforts" that his teammates – especially Beast Boy – tended to crave.

At least, that's what he liked for them to think.

There were times, like tonight, when Robin would chose to retire early and retreat back into his room. Generally, they occurred after long periods of inactivity, as tonight had, periods when Robin would feel a need to reconnect with something that the others weren't familiar with.

On these nights, he would follow a specific routine of security, just as he chose to do now. First, with a twist of his wrist, he would lock the door very securely behind him, then he would pause and scan the room for anything that seemed to be even remotely out of place. Then, he would move across the room and close the blinds of each window one by one, sealing them as tightly as he could until he had shut out all light. To most, the absence of light would seem stifling, almost frightening, but after all his years of covering himself in shadow, the darkness held, for him, a sense of comfort.

Once the room was dark, he would turn on a single light – the small lamp on his desk – and, with carefully focused steps, slowly make his way to the smallest of his bookcases, the one in the corner of the room farthest from the door.

Just as he had on all of those other nights, Robin scanned his eyes over the spines of each book until he finally found the one that he was looking for – an old, well out-of-date field guide for bird watchers. Seizing it firmly by the top of the spine, he pivoted it forward on its bottom corner and triggered the switch that was hidden there.

The bottom shelf of the case popped open to reveal a small, shallow drawer. Robin leaned over it, careful not to block the lamplight so that he could use it to gaze into the depths of the drawer and examine its contents, piece by piece.

Yellowed, fragile circus play-bills were scattered unceremoniously across the bottom of the smoothly-carved drawer, each one promising yet another dazzling performance from their staring acrobatic family. A small baton, only one of out of a set of three that had been meant for juggling, rolled from the back and thumped against the front wall with a little plastic click. On the way down, it bounced harmlessly over a tarnished silver powder box, a worn, decorative belt buckle and a small, thin, leather-bound photo album.

Robin reached in and pulled the album into his lap. He flipped through the pages idly, letting the memories guide his hand as his mind drifted back to another time, another place…

None of his teammates knew about it, not really. Raven had seen into his mind on occasion, and the others all had little snippets that they could put together if they wanted to, but no one really did. They all knew how rough the past could be, how unpleasant hidden memories really were – they'd all experienced it. They all knew

Within their friendship, it was almost like an unwritten rule: No one talked about the accident that made Cyborg how he was, no one asked how Beast Boy became the green-skinned wonder, and no one mentioned anything about Robin's family.

There were times when he wondered if it would be easier for everyone concerned to just tell them of his past, the way that Raven had. To tell them about the Flying Graysons and their acrobatic prestige, about the 'accident' that took their lives and left their only son an orphan, about the man who had come, a shadow wrapped in shadows, and given him a new place in the world, a place where he did and did not belong all at the same time…

But just thinking about such things brought back memories that made his stomach lurch and his head swim with long-buried emotions. These feelings, the ones that he had buried so deep inside of him for so long, they were the reason he always decided that such memories were better off where they were, hidden away…

Tonight, a sudden loud boom shook him out of his thoughts with an almost violent jerk, accompanied by a more soothing, familiar voice. "Robin?"

The Boy Wonder composed himself, quickly stowing away his secrets before going to crack open the door. He stuck his head out with an awkward little grunt. "Nrgh…Starfire? What is it?"

"I am sorry to have awakened you," the alien girl bowed apologetically, mistaking his masked annoyance for grogginess. "But Cyborg has discovered something…most unusual."

Robin frowned 'unusual' never seemed to turn out well for them. "How unusual?"

"It is…most troubling."

"All right, then," Robin ran a hand through his hair as he stepped out, his voice taking on the slightly authoritative tone that it needed to help him keep the team together. "Let's go check it out."

He took off down the hall at a light job. Starfire hovered just behind him, her Tamaranian powers keeping her vertical a full four feet off the floor.

"Robin…" she said, in the slow, careful way she always did. "You appear to be agitated. I hope that I have done nothing to upset you."

Robin shook himself. His nonchalant expression has slipped out of place…he slipped it back on and gave her a little grin. "I'm fine. You didn't do anything. We better hurry, though. I've got a feeling this is going to be important."

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

"Uh…Whazzat?"

Cyborg simply crossed his arms, looking up at the briefing screen and the source of Beast Boy's oh-so-eloquent question. It currently showed a bird's-eye view of the city, laid out across a grid. Just above one of the shorter sky scrapers, a digitally emphasized electric-red ripple had appeared, flashing in and out every few seconds, with its pace increasing every minute.

"It's a disruption in the temporal mechanics of the time-space continuum surrounding the city."

Beast Boy looked up at their largest member with a black expression. "An'…Whazzat mean?"

With a labored sigh, Raven offered her own translation. "It's a hole in space. The begins of a portal to another world…or another time."

"Oh, like a wormhole! Gotcha." Beast Boy grinned and nodded, happy with his little tidbit of science fiction info.

Cyborg frowned, giving his green-skinned friend a short 'I just said that' kind of look, before turning his attention to the rest of their group. "Raven and I rigged up this temporal scanner last month. With all the trouble we've had with this kind of stuff in the past, we thought it might be a good investment."

"Looks like it paid off," Robin agreed. The screen zoomed in a little, focusing on the center of the ripple, and the image of the city came into a bit sharper focus. "Can you tell who it is, where it came from?"

"Negative," Cyborg shook his head. "That tech's way out of our league. This thing could be some experiment from Star Labs or an alien invasion from the other side of the galaxy for all we know."

Starfire turned her emerald eyes up to the screen with a concerned expression. "It is better, though, to be safe than it is to be sorry."

"Agreed," Robin nodded and turned to the group. "Cyborg, stay here and get us a visual of whatever comes out of there, so we'll know what we're getting into. The rest of us will be the welcoming committee."

"Gotcha," Cyborg gave a single curt nod. "You guys be careful out there."

Robin gave his old friend a grin and a 'no-worries' wave, then turned to the front of the room and order, with all the gentle force of a good leader: "Titans…_Go!_"

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

Five minutes later, Cyborg was crouched over his control panel, well-trained fingers flying over the keys without his eyes having to watch them. Instead, his gaze moved regularly between the two images on the screens – the gradually forming portal on one, and the security camera feeds of the rest of the group's rooftop route on the other.

"The disruption rate's starting to pick up," he reported calmly. "We should have an appearance any second now."

There was a bit of a crackle as Robin's communicator chimed in, the rushing wind of his run causing static in the receiver. "Good. Just keep your eye on it."

"Roger that, Rob," Cyborg's fingers ran over the screen, their satellite's camera zooming in until it was focused on only the roof where the signal seemed to be concentrating. The strength of the warp was not so well-defined that the air itself seemed to ripple like water when a rock was skipped over it.

"It's gonna be close, though," Cyborg muttered, speaking more to himself than to Robin. "We've never actually watched one open before. I don't know what kind of power might be…"

At that moment, a loud _POP _echoed through his head-set, followed by a blast of static, and the portal's screen filled with a blinding blue light before dissolving into a snowy white on black. "Woah!"

"Cyborg?" Robin's voice broke though the static, sounding concerned. "Cyborg, what happened?"

The half-robotic former athlete swore under his breath, leaning over his work again. "The portal's energy was too much, it overloaded our system…No worries, though, I'll have back on-line in a sec."

The screen flickered a few times, went to black, then came back to life and returned to the darkened rooftop, where two figures now stood. Cyborg zoomed in on the first one, the one closes to where the portal's center had been, and managed a decent profile shot. The Titan's computer mainframe connected instantly and was searching through the criminal files for a match within seconds.

"I got a positive ID on our time-hopper," Cyborg reported the moment the info was available. "Guy calls himself Chronos. Took over for a real super villain from the Ivy Town area a couple of years back. Tries to use time travel as a way to pull off heists and kill people for cash, but he's got a reputation for bumbling things up, more often than not."

"Looks like he actually got it right this time," Beast Boy noted. "First time for everything."

Cyborg grinned a bit before getting back to business.

"Looks like somebody's up there with him…" the second figure, much smaller than Chronos, lunged forward suddenly. "They're fighting. I think the kid's trying to take him down."

Cyborg fiddled with the camera controls as Chronos and the smaller figure met with blows. He increased the sharpness on the picture and zoomed in as the would-be assassin distracted his opponent for a split second, finally giving him a good look.

"What the…?"

Cyborg frowned at the image, finding that it didn't quite make sense to him. "Robin? How'd you get there so fast?"

"What are you talking about?" Robin's voice asked, and he appeared on the other screen for a brief moment as he and Starfire darted past one of the cameras. "We're still three blocks away."

Cuborg stared at the two screens a moment longer, making sure that his eyes weren't playing ticks on him. They weren't.

There was Robin, running through the city, and there was another Robin on that roof, facing Chronos head-on.

"Guys…I think we have a problem."

**_TBC…_**


	2. A Tale of Two Robins

**_Disclaimer: _**_I own nothing. DC owns everything. They may be abusing their Death Stick privileges recently, but they still own it all. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Robins**

In the most basic possible sense, Tim Drake was having a pretty crappy day.

Though, given the general standard of you average superhero-level crappy day, the day itself really hadn't been all that bad. It just seemed worse than it would have otherwise because it was the latest in a cycle of bad days that had been spiraling around him for the past three weeks.

Not that anything could have compared with the day that had been the start of those three weeks. That was the day that had become the ultimate worst day of his entire young life.

That was the day that his father, Jack Drake, had been murdered.

Murdered by a cheap thug hired in a desperate attempt to cover up the homicidal tendencies of the crazy ex-wife of a superhero that Tim had only really been acquainted with through Bruce's JLA contacts. She was in Arkham now, and the assassin has been shot by the very man he had gone to kill, but that meant nothing to the Boy Wonder. Punishment and retribution wouldn't bring his father back.

Tim had spent the first week after the incident in bed, with the covers pulled up over his head, hiding from the world. The first day, Nightwing had called his family line every thirty minutes from 6 am to 9 in the evening, when he went on patrol. Oracle had taken over for him, doing the same from 10 to 4 the next day. Tim had ignored them all, lost in the memories, shutting himself away from everything, until Alfred – bless the dear old man's paternal soul – had gotten in with a spare key and coaxed some warm food into his body.

Even with the entire bat-clan checking in on him and Alfred's home cooking available whenever he could keep it down, it had been the very worst week of Tim's entire life.

Despite Bruce's objections, he had gone to Titan's Tower that weekend, just as he had been planning to long before his father's death. It was familiar, it was normal, and his friends – Wonder Girl and Kid Flash and the rest – didn't know what had happened, and he wanted it that way. After a week of remembering, all he wanted to do was forget, to lock the feelings away inside of him and deny any power that they had once held.

But he couldn't even have that, as a rogue villain…a leftover of the incident that had killed his father – had sparked the rage and sorrow back to life, resulting in another break down on his part.

If nothing else, his friends had been there to pick up the pieces.

When he'd gotten back, to his surprise, Bruce did not even seem to think about uttering the word "I told you so." Instead, he insisted that he take it easy for the next few weeks – no school, no patrols, minimum training, just rest. He'd chosen to spend it away from Gotham – away from the memories that Gotham would bring – and somehow wound up back in his room at the Tower. In the middle of the week, he'd taken up Conner's offer for dinner at the Kent's in Smallville, but other than that, he remained in San Francisco with Vic and Gar.

And it had helped.

He'd felt better – much better – the following weekend, participating in training, getting to know Mia, their latest addition; and even taking on Doctor Light when the giant flashbulb had reared his ugly head. He'd returned to Gotham, but stayed off the beat, left at home with his thoughts. They'd grown dark again, and he had been thankful to return to the Tower for another weekend with the Titans.

And then today had happened.

It had started out as just the usual sort of alert – the super-villain of the week, in this case the bumbling time traveler Chronos, had been attempting to bust an old metahuman buddy of his out of the newly-renovated Alcatraz prison. True to their contract with the City of San Francisco, the Titans had retaliated. A battle ensued, fending off attacks from the various gizmos the not-quite-genius had somehow picked up, trading the occasional had-to-hand blows…Chronos had tried to get away, hastily imputing coordinates into the machine on his arm. Tim had lunged at him, and…

And the last thing he remembered was a frightened cry in Wonder Girl's voice: _"Robin!"_

Then, nothing.

Tim now found himself being pressed from all sides, the very breath that he held pushing outward against his lungs. Groping through the darkness, he held onto Chronos with both hands, despite the villain's struggles. He knew better than to let go. Letting go would get him lost, trapped in this non-world between times, possibly forever.

He fumbled through the shadow, his right hand losing its grip only to find a new one on something hard, something that suddenly broke and came loose, and then he was falling, falling…

His sight and senses returned seconds before his feet hit the ground, just enough time for his training to kick in the instant the earth was solidly beneath him.

He pushed away from Chronos, arching his back into a graceful handspring. The villain stumbled, green cape rustling around him, gripping his gauntlet as though it had bitten him. "You…You little brat…"

Tim rolled his eyes – this guy must be really minor-league if that was the best he could do with his insults – and stuffed the little whatever-it-was into a spare pouch on his utility belt without giving it a second look.

Chronos hissed again. "Give me that!"

He took one step and wobbled awkwardly, giving the Boy Wonder the opening he needed. Tim lunged, delivering a hard right to the man's check, following it up with a sharp knee to the gut. "Give it up. We're bringing you in."

"'We'?" Chronos snickered at some kind of private joke, though it turned into more of a cough. "You're fooling yourself, boy. There is no one else."

Tim frowned, confused, and glanced over his shoulder to observe the situation. It was dark, which it hadn't been before, and the roof was more old-fashioned – there was a water tank at the very edge, and a stairwell with a pile of debris stacked up next to it just on his right. But most importantly, his teammates were nowhere to be found.

His guard dropped for a split second, giving Chronos exactly what he needed. The air was thrown from Tim's lungs when his opponent kicked him in the stomach, and again when he crashed into the wall of the stair house. He dropped to the ground, gasping and hacking as he tried to force the air back into his lungs.

There was a low chuckle as Chronos stepped forward, the kind of little laugh that the bad guys _always_ used when they thought they'd gotten the upper hand on Batman's teenage sidekick.

Tim _hated_ that laugh.

"Gotcha, little birdie," the assassin snickered. "We'll see how well you fly once I clip your…"

_"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"_

A black shadow, alive and animated in the shape of a bird, shot from one side and collided with Chronos. It swept him away and dropped him in a heap on the other side of the roof, his back pressed against the stone guardrail.

Tim coughed, gaining back a bit of his breath, and took a moment to sigh with relief. The attack was familiar, even if the call had not been. "Raven…"

A second later, a familiar, fem-feral battle roar echoed through the air as a gold-and-purple blur shot after the time traveling villain. Starfire seized Chronos by the collar of his flashy green cape, hoisting him up twenty feet into the air. "I do not know what you are doing here, but I will _not_ allow you to cause harm!"

Tim shook himself, staggering to his feet as he tried. There was something…_different_…about the alien princess. The way that she moved, the way that she spoke, the way that she…_felt_…was similar, but it wasn't the Starfire that he knew. "Kory? What…?"

"Damn you..." Chronos grunted, struggling to reach into one of the many silver pockets on his excessively over-laden belt. "Every last one of your brats is a pain."

Tim realized what was going to happen seconds before the handful of blinding powder was thrown into Starfire's wide green eyes. The golden-skinned girl shrieked and jerked back instinctively, dropping her captive as she fell.

Tim was on the move a second later, now running purely on adrenaline. The Starfire he knew was almost a foot taller than he was and 25 pounds heavier, but this was just about the right size for his attempted 'catch' to turn into a somewhat effective 'breaking her fall' maneuver. If nothing else, he managed to keep her head from hitting the hard concrete, even if it did mean that his body took the blow instead.

With Starfire weighing him down, Tim wasn't quite able to get a grip on the situation before Chronos gained his second wind, returning to his feet with a hefty jump. But the bad guy had barely managed to get on his feet before Raven – materializing from her soul-self once more – appeared seemingly from nothing and delivered quite a solid kick to the side of his head.

Starfire groaned and sat up off of Tim, rubbing at her blinded eyes. "Robin...?"

Tim gulped, rubbing his neck. Up close, it was even more obvious that this was _not_ the Starfire that he knew. She was too quiet, too young, too...small.

"Robin?" she repeated, reaching out and grabbing hold of his costume, as though assuring herself that he was still there. "Robin, what...?"

"Starfire!"

Both heads turned, and Tim moved to push Starfire into a duck as a large green condor swooped just over their heads and claws at Chronos's gaudy silver goggles. The time-traveler reared back with a scream, gripping a handful of blood-stained red hair. "Damn you all!"

The eagle covered back in an elegant arch, swooping low over Tim and Starfire as they uncurled from their previous position. It dropped to the ground just behind the owner of the original warning voice, reforming into a human state. Beast Boy straightened, his green eyes slowly widening. "Dude...no _way_."

Tim lifted his eyes and came face-to-masked-face with another Robin.

They stared at each other for a full thirty seconds before all the pieces clicked together in Tim's head. He _knew_ this Robin, he had grown up knowing him, studying everything that he could about him, eventually even training with him and around him. When he was a child, he had pictures of this Robin, newspaper clippings, strung up all over his room. Even though it had been years since this particular Robin had been seen, he knew him in a heartbeat – there was no other answer.

Tim swallowed against a dry throat, and when he breathed out, the whispered name passed through his parched lips before he'd even willed it to.

If nothing else, he at least managed to limit it to a single, breathless word:

"_Dick_..."

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

Robin jerked backwards as the name reached his ears ,floating on the wind like a withered old leaf.

He hadn't heard that name for years.

Confusion piled on top of confusion in his mind, trying to sort through all the information he had been given in the last five minutes. Cyborg's blurry reports of 'another Robin' on the roof had been troubling enough, and though the boy's appearance to keep Starfire from harm was essentially a good thing, it also created a light pang of jealousy that Robin would have rather pretended didn't exist. It was beaten down quickly by the realization that the boy was _not_, as Cyborg had guessed, some twisted version of Robin himself.

This new Robin was smaller than he was and built thinner, making him a tiny bit taller and probably a little bit lighter than Beast Boy. His movements held less power and precision, but almost seemed to be calculated so that every motion added up to the full equation. Despite this, with his build and proportions, he might as well have been some kid in a Halloween costume.

Except that your average school kid would not have been able to jump in the way he had.

Raven's voice suddenly brought Robin out of his thoughts: "Watch out!"

On instinct, he launched himself to one side as Beast Boy shifted into a kangaroo to jump away from the small explosive charge Chronos had thrown between them. The pudgy, sloppy-looking man in bright green and silver has gone red in the face with rage, gunning for a fight as he stormed through the smoke and debris he had created himself.

Robin rolled up onto one knee, drawing his staff and extending it out to its full length. Raven landed beside him with a sigh. "Looks like he's still got some fight in him."

_"I'm headin' over there, Rob,"_ Cyborg's voice reported from the communicator. _"Think you can handle him until I get there?"_

"We'll try to save you some action," Robin reported with a smirk, then turned off his communicator and glanced to his teammates for a few hurried instructions. "Raven, you take care of Starfire. Beast Boy, you're with me. Titans, go!"

The blinding, painful red was just starting to clear out of Starfire's eyes when she realized that she was being guided away from the battle by Robin – but it was a much smaller, skinnier Robin than the one she was used to. She blinked, her eyes watering with pain, and tried to focus on him. "Ro…bin?"

"Stay here," he instructed in an unfamiliar voice, pushing a small bottle of water, indicative of emergency rations, into her hand. "Use this. Wash your eyes out and stay low."

A cold chill, familiar though still mind-numbing, radiated from just behind them as Raven's voice broke through again. "Get away from her."

The guiding touch on her shoulder was gone suddenly as the boy backed off. "Just trying to help."

"It's not needed."

"I can see that, now."

With that, the boy turned on the spot and rushed their opponent, drawing a thin metal rod from the depths of his cape. The weapon telescoped out to it a full six-foot bo staff, which he brought down hard against the older man's temple.

Chronos grunted, stumbling forward a few steps as his attacker slid past. "You little…"

"Chronos!"

The man twisted, coming eye-to-eye with Robin. The leader of the Titans narrowed his eyes behind the lenses of his mask.

"I don't know where you came from," he said seriously, taking a few more steps to the side. "But in this time, you're wanted in three states. So we're bringing you in."

The other boy, his mirror-image, scowled at him from the opposite side, breathing hard. "_Please_, Dick, not now…"

Robin went stiff again, his grip tightening to an almost uncomfortable level.

Chronos looked back and forth between them, apparently as baffled by the appearance of the two identically-costumed boys as anyone else in the area. He grunted, glancing down at the complicated silver gauntlet on his right wrist. Something about it made him furious, and he suddenly lunged at Robin. "_You!_ Give me back that temporal core!"

Robin didn't know what he was talking about, but he was ready for the attack. He caught Chronos's hands with his staff, rolling into a fierce grappling match with the larger villain.

The other one moved, about to engage as well, but was cut off by the large green snake that reared up and wrapped around him in a vice-like grip.

"Hold it, pal!" Beast Boy ordered, tightening his coils. "How do we know you're on our side? I bet you're working with this creep!"

"Let…me…go!" the groaned, squirming in all directions, but the snake just tightened its hold.

Raven straightened from her place beside her injured teammate, keeping her purple eyes trained on the battle. She lifted her hand, pushing the dark energy of her mind to wrap around the heavy wooden crates piled beside her. _"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"_

The debris lifted into the air and shot at Chronos. Robin saw it coming and jumped back in time to allow the attack to crash into his opponent. Chronos turned just in time to duck the attack, the pile of debris landing in a heap behind him.

Robin straightened into a defensive stance, throwing a shuriken-like dart to distract Chronos and glancing in Raven's direction. "How's Starefire?"

"She's nearly recovered," the dark girl reported, keeping a cautious eye on the battle and a concerned hand on her golden-skinned friend's shoulder. She watched as the Beast Boy-snake struggled with their strange new arrival. "What about the kid?"

"Keep an eye on him," Robin instructed, carefully circling their opponent. "I don't trust him."

Chronos toke advantage of the distraction to knock Robin's projectile attacks out of the way and throw one of his own – in the form of a putrid smoke-bomb, right in Robin's face. The Boy Wonder reeled back, one arm raised defensively, and was suddenly knocked to the ground when Chronos tackled him through the smoke. Robin wound up on his back, his elbowing being pressed into the ground by his own weapon.

"You little brat…!"

"Robin, get low!"

The surprise of Cyborg's voice made him slip into instinct mode, and Robin dropped his arms backward instantly. In the moment that Chronos was off-balance, a blue beam of hypersonic sound struck him in the chest, throwing him off Robin and onto the ground in one motion.

Cyborg smirked as he clicked his weapon back into place. "Booyah. Just in time for the fun."

Chronos growled as he pulled himself to his feet for the third time, now facing Robin, Cyborg, Robin and the fully-recovered and angry Starfire. Recognizing that the odds were against him, Chronos turned once more to the machine on his wrist, grumbling in annoyance as he did. He punched in a few small codes, then hit a button with the flat of his hand.

The kid seemed to realize what he was doing before any of the others did – he paused his struggling with Beast Boy just long enough shout, "No!"

Robin moved forward, but it was too late. With a small pop and a flash of red light, the man was gone, and the only thing Robin hit was thin air.

Starfire hovered forward, perplexed and annoyed. "He is…gone?"

"No…" Robin swore under his breath, even more annoyed than his teammate. "Did he time jump?"

Cyborg glanced over the edge of the roof. "He jumped, but there's no time. Look, down there!"

They looked, just in time to see Chronos's gaudy green and silver cape disappear around the corner of the building across the street. Robin hiss again. "He's getting away. We need to go after him!"

Cyborg frowned at their leader uncertainly. "What about the kid?"

"OW!"

All four of them jerked back around at Beast Boy's shout, finding the green-skin teen back in his usual form, and gripping his right thigh with boy hands. "He bit me! The little brat bit me!"

Robin twisted again just in time to see the end of a cape – _his_ cape, as far as he was concerned – disappear over the end of the roof as the strange young boy leapt onto the fire escape. For a minute, Robin stopped, uncertain of the situation, debating with himself…

"Well, Rob?" Cyborg broke in, sounding as confused as Robin felt. "What do we do?"

…

"The kid. Go after the kid."

**_TBC…_**


	3. A Thousand Words

_**Disclaimer: **__I own nothing. DC owns everything. They may be abusing their Death Stick privileges recently, but they still own it all. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 3: A Thousand Words**

Tim's feet pounded against the sidewalk with a steady rhythm, a rhythm that pushed him through the burning pair of his muscles and the confusing, muddled thoughts that were swimming through his mind.

He knew what had happened. His keen detective mind had figured it out the moment he came face-to-face with the other Robin, the figure he'd only seen in photographs and security footage, but whose face he knew as well as his own. He'd accidentally piggy-backed onto Chronos's time-jump, gotten pulled into the past – or something like the past – and those teens that he'd met were the Titans. Dick's Titans.

And that meant that the time-hopping villain was his only chance of returning to his own time.

He picked up the pace, leaping over a row of garbage cans like the Olympic athlete he'd been trained to match. He hadn't made it down to street-level in time to catch up with Chronos completely, but even if he'd wanted to stop now, he didn't really have a choice…

A noise from the right caught his attention with just enough time for him to kick off the alley wall and dodge the R-shaped shuriken that had been thrown at him. He flipped as he dropped through the air, facing his attacker with a groan. "Dammit, I don't have _time_ for this!"

"That's too bad," Robin said in a voice far too serious for someone his age, the white lenses of his mask reflecting the glare of the street lamp. "I'm not letting you slip away this time."

He lunged, raising his weapon over his head. Tim slid back and drew the collapsible bo staff in one motion, catching the blow before it could connect and holding them apart. He grunted under the effort. "Dick, _please_, don't do this!"

"I don't know how you know that name…" Robin hissed, yanking back and going for a mid-body blow. "But if you think it's going to distract me, you're wrong!"

Tim knocked the other's weapon aside, dropped down, and swept his legs out from under him. "It's just your name!"

The other boy bent backwards in his fall, bracing his hand on the ground to give him the leverage for a controlled summersault. He flipped his staff around and landed a hard blow just under the base of Tim's ribs. "My name is _Robin_."

Tim stumbled, the air knocked from his lungs. He went down on one knee, his weapon clattering to the ground beside him with a metallic ring. He drew in one solid breath, which rattled his lungs against their casings painfully and pulled another wince to the surface.

Robin paused the fight and stepped forward, the metal toes of his boots click-clacking against the concrete street. "Give it up, kid. It's time to stop playing around."

"Who's playing?"

The light wheeze was accompanied by lightening-fast motion as Tim whipped a smoke pellet from his belt and threw it into the ground. The plastic casing shattered instantly, a huge cloud of smoke erupting up to cover their entire field of vision. Robin darted through the smoke, groping blindly, and managed to get a grip on a leather pouch – one of the compartments on Tim's utility belt, which ripped open as the smaller boy shot away.

By the time the smoke had cleared and Robin could see again, he was once again alone.

"Robin?" A voice echoed down the alley, soft and hesitant. "Robin, are you…?"

"I'm fine, Star," he called back as he straightened, scowling a popping a tense crick out of his back. "I'm here. He slipped away…again."

"Again?" Cyborg demanded as the rest of the team caught up with him. Beast Boy immediately shifted into a blood hound and sniffed around for a scent as a rather irate Cyborg turned to Robin with a sigh. "Man, we've been tracking this kid for two hours now, and this is the fifth time we've lost him. We're not gonna catch him like this, and our chances of catchin' up to Chronos are nil now. I think it's time we call it a night."

Robin sighed and rubbed his sore neck with a frown. "You're probably right…"

Raven stepped forward with silent grace, glancing at Beast Boy before turning her haunting purple eyes on their group leader. "I'm not sure why we went after the kid in the first place."

"He bothers me."

"He's shown no sign of being a threat. Chronos has."

"I agree with Raven," Starfire chimed in, hovering a few inches from the ground as she moved around them. "I do not believe that the strange Robin means us harm. He would not have helped me if he did."

"I never said he was a threat," Robin pointed out defensively, crossing his arms. He frowned in a contemplative manner, his eyes narrowed behind his mask. "Just that…he bothers me."

"I don't blame you, dude," Cyborg added. "Having some kid pop up wearing your costume would bug anybody. Plus, it's a dangerous game he's playing..."

Robin nodded absently, still focused. "I want to know what his deal is. Who he is, where came from, how he got here…"

"Um, dudes?" beast Boy interrupted, shifting back to his normal form. "You might want to take a look at this."

Starfire arrived first, looking over the green-skinned boy's shoulder. "They appear to be photographs."

"They must have fallen out of the pouch the kid tore during the fight," Robin added absently. "So?"

"Take a look," Beast Boy repeated, and passed the pictures into Robin's hand.

Robin lifted them into the light of a nearby street lamp, with Cyborg and Raven leaning in for glances of their own, and his mouth dropped open just slightly. "No way…"

"Oh, man," Cyborg gasped. "Is that _us_?"

It was.

Partially.

The first picture in the little stack was a glossy group photo almost reminiscent of a school class picture, though the subjects had been separated into two groups – one bunched in the center, the other looped around them in a horseshoe shape. In the first group, they could only recognize the strange boy in the Robin costume, though the brown-haired kid with one arm around the 'Boy Wonder's neck wore a red-and-yellow suit that couldn't belong to anyone but Kid Flash. He seemed to have leapt up at the last moment to throw his arms around the necks and shoulders of 'Robin' and a red-clothed girl in red on his other side. Both of them looked surprised and maybe a little annoyed with 'Kid Flash' – she was giving him the same kind of look that Raven tended to give Beast Boy when he started to act up. Behind those three were two taller teens, both posed so that they were turned slightly out, but twisted back in mid-laugh at their friends' antics. One was a beautiful blonde girl in dark, sleek red; the other a broad-shouldered, strong-looking boy in a black t-shirt, displaying a distinctive and familiar red shield across his chest.

On the other hand, the second group, the one looping around these five, was made up of four extremely familiar figures – Beast Boy, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, all older, different, but somehow still the same. Starfire towered over everyone in the picture save Cyborg, her hair gorwn long and curly down her back, and she was dressed much more…_openly_…than any of them had ever seen her before. Cyborg had filled out as well, remaining strong and stoic alongside his obvious upgrades. Raven, in some ways, seemed dark and stronger, but also more elegant, hovering solemnly behind Beast Boy, whose trademark huge grin wasn't changed a bit.

It took a few minutes for the Titans' minds to register it all before they finally reacted. Cyborg reached around and snatched the photo out of Robin's hands almost excitedly. "It _is_ us! And man, do we look good! Just look at that tech fillin' me out! I wonder where those upgrades came from…?"

"Hey, you're not the only one!" Beast boy grinned, pushing his chest out like the way his self in the picture had been posed. "Dude, I always knew we'd grow up to be awesome!"

"That's all well and good," Raven sighed and rolled her eyes. "But we still don't know if that's even _us_ in that picture."

"What're you talking about? It's gotta be us, there's no way…"

Raven narrowed her eyes at him. "Time and space are more fluid than you think. It may be us, but it might not be _us_."

Beast Boy immediately shut up in his confusion, his eyes widening into a clear 'I-don't-understand-a-word-you-just-said' expression. Robin ignored him and pushed into the silence, glancing at the darkest member of their team. "You think it's authentic?"

"It _looks_ authentic," Raven sighed, plucking the photos out of Cyborg's hand with her powers and floating them over to her own grip.

The half-metal teen crossed his arms and slipped back into a serious expression. "Yeah, and I'd guess the kid in the Robin suit is the one were chasing."

Starefire hovered a few inches above the ground to look over Raven's shoulder. "But if that is the case, then why is our Robin not…there?"

"Maybe he's holding the camera?"

No one responded to Beast Boy's comment, but even he didn't really believe it.

Raven separated the group photo from the rest of the small stack and shifted through the remaining three snapshot blandly. Two of them seemed to feature the younger bunch of 'heroes,' though they were dressed differently – one showed the girls, or she guessed that it might have been the girls, as neither was wearing red and only one carried arrows, sitting next to each other and talking; the other the shorter boy, dressed in white and red instead of yellow, running just inches out of the reach of the tallest boy, who wore the gaudiest costume she'd seen in a long time.

The third picture seemed out of place until she realized that the un-costumed, unmasked boy with in the baseball cap was their mysterious not-Robin, being hugged from behind by a taller, older man with graying black hair.

The thought made her stop, just for a moment. She'd never seen _her _Robin without his mask. Not even in his own dreams.

How…strange.

Returning to the original picture, her fingers brushed against a few unusual markings on the back of the smooth surface, and she turned it over to look.

"There's something written here."

Robin didn't look up from his thoughts, just muttered, "Written where?"

"On the _picture_," Raven stressed, and pushed it into his grasp to bring it to his attention.

Robin took the photos, his eyes narrowing as he read the hand-written words aloud. "Titans Together – just like always. Signed, Bart."

Cyborg frowned. "'Bart'?"

"What does this mean, Robin?" Starfire asked innocently, turning her big eyes to look at him.

"I don't know. I can guess, but I don't know," Robin's eyebrows scrunched together and he pressed the pictures into a tight stack, though he took care not to damage the 'evidence.' "But we're going to figure it out."

He slipped the pictures away into the pocket of his belt, leading the way of out the alley. "Back to the Tower, Titans. We need to go at this from another angle."

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

Tim counted eight full blocks of absolutely no foot-steps behind him before he let his pace slow, and passed over another five rooftops before he stopped altogether. He panted a bit to catch his breath, scanning his eyes over the area before finally letting himself relax completely, dropping down to rest in a distant corner.

His body ached with the exhaustion and his stomach squirmed with nausea, still uneasy after the time jump and unable to adjust because of the constant momentum. Tim winced, closing his eyes against the swirling colors that flashed by them, and leaned his head back against the wall.

…Two minutes later, when his stomach had settled, he discovered that closing his eyes had _not_ been a particularly smart move on his part. He didn't want to open them again. In the last three days, he hadn't slept even the tiny bit he usually got after a patrol, kept awake by dreams of his father and Stephanie and the others. If he wasn't careful, he would fall asleep here.

…

Which wouldn't be so bad, but it would be dangerous if he didn't take at least a little bit of precaution, and he needed to find _his _team, if they were here.

Tim reached into a pocket on the left-hand side of his belt, digging out his Titans communicator. Without opening his eyes, he brought the smooth casing up to his mouth and spoke softly. "Titans, come…"

He stopped. What if Dick's Titans used the same frequency?

Another sigh tugged at his lips, and the communicator dropped down to his chest for a moment before he settled on another message to broadcast.

"Conner…Cassie, Bart, Mia…It's me. I don't know if any of you go here, too, but…I'm here. And we need to find each other."

His other hand moved to another pocket nostalgically, but stopped when he felt ripped cloth. His eyes snapped open as he groped at the pocket, trying to convince himself that it wasn't the one he though it was, but it was – most of his evidence bags were now scattered in the wind along with, more importantly, the few photographs from his collection that he kept with him.

Sure, everyone on the team had copies of the group picture, and, given that both he and Cassie had been shutter-happy up to their Apokolips incident, he had more than enough Young Justice snapshots, but…he had a photo of his _father_ there, too. There weren't many left of those, and there never would be any more.

_Shit_.

He set his communicator on a loop broadcast and let it rest beside him as he curled up inside of his cape. He settled down into the shadows, resting his head on his arms, and sighed into the night air.

Tim told himself that he was going to stay vigilant, that he was going to wait for the others to hear his message and respond before he did anything else. But he had fallen asleep before he could even finish the thought.

_**TBC…**_


	4. Investigations

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 4: Investigations**

Robin frowned at the sleek photographs spread out over his work desk, analyzing them, searching them for any sign of forgery or trick. The dates on the back of the store-developed shots, ranged from three to ten years in the future, and the quality of the printing seemed just slightly advanced enough in the same mind-set. Both seemed to back up his initial hypothesis - time travel - but that brought up questions that he didn't want to answer.

Namely: Where was _he?_

The kid in the Robin costume wasn't him - he was too small, too thin and, most importantly, too young. Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy, Cyborg, they were all featured and had all aged accordingly, he but _he_ was nowhere to be seen, 'grown-up' or not.

His trained detective skills, kicked in with half a dozen theories and possibilities, but the first one that hit him stuck. The thing that set him apart from his teammates was obvious - he had no natural 'powers' of his own, aside from his training, he was a normal teenage boy. That meant he was vulnerable. His weaknesses were the easiest to exploit.

If someone managed to get the drop on him at the wrong time…

Robin swallowed hard at the thought and pushed it to the back of his mind. He pushed the group photo to the side of his desk, turning to the other three shots. Two of them were interesting, but not useful - brief moments in the lives of masked heroes that he neither knew nor could identify - but the third caught his eye.

Robin turned on the desk lamp and pulled a magnifying glass from his drawer, focusing on the details. He compared the smiling, unmasked boy in the snapshot with the grinning, half-strangled Robin in the group shot. Careful examination picked up on the smallest aspects - the shape of the chin and ears, slight changes in skin tone, near-invisible freckles and moles - and, in his opinion, the two faces matched up in every way.

The boy was the other _(fake!)_ Robin, outside of the mask and costume. Obviously, the man with him was important to him, but Robin couldn't quite pin him down. It wasn't Bruce. Or Alfred.

…

The kid's _father_…?

The thought made Robin's skin prickle. Even if - for whatever stupid reason - Batman _had_ replaced him, why would he chose someone that still had a father, a family, a…

A home?

"Robin?"

Starfire's voice and light knock startled him, but Robin managed choke it down before the door slid open. "Our friends that you contacted have arrived."

"Good," Robin grabbed the first picture and clicked off the desktop light as he slipped out of the lab. "Thanks, Starfire."

The alien girl's eyes remained on him as he brushed past her. "Have you managed to discover anything of the other Robin?"

A light, annoyed chill ran up Robin's spine, and he pushed it back down. "Nothing yet."

"Robin…" Starfire nibbled on her bottom lip in the awkward manner she used when she was uncertain of what to say. "I feel that we may be approaching this in an incorrect manner."

Robin took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. He was _not_ going to take his frustration out on Starfire, she was only trying to help "What do you mean?"

"I feel that we should not be treating this boy as though he is our enemy. I feel we should be searching for him as a lost friend, and hope that he may assist us in locating Chronos."

Robin took another deep breath, letting it out very, very slowly. "Thank you, Starfire. I'll keep that in mind."

Starfire sighed, recognizing the team leader's slightly-cold, 'I don't agree with you, but I don't want to hurt your feelings' tone, and floated off to help Beast Boy prepare a late dinner for the Tower. Robin groaned a bit once she was gone, then recovered himself and calmly strode into the Titan's living room.

He was almost instantly greeted by a red and yellow blur that zoomed up and slid to a stop just in front of him. "Hiya Rob! Long time no see!"

Despite himself, Robin let a bit of a grin slip onto his face as he greeted Kid Flash. Behind the gold-and-scarlet speedster, lounging across the couch, was a grinning Speedy, who was toying with one of his own energy arrows. The archer vaulted over the back of the couch, tossing his arrow back into place as he moved cockily up the stairs. "Sorry it took so long. Had to wrap up Johnny Rancid's latest stupid plot back in Steel City, and zippy over there tripped."

Kid Flash scowled. "You're the one who left your bow lying around!"

"I most certainly did _not_. I'm an archer, Kid, I know how to handle my stuff!"

"It's good to see you both," Robin interrupted, cutting off an argument before it could start. "And thanks for coming on such short notice. I need to see if you guys can ID some people for me."

He had hardly produced the group photo before Kid Flash snatched it out of his hands. A second later, the fastest boy alive simply stopped moving, held completely still for a few seconds, then freaked out a bit. "Hey, what the hell is this? Who's the punk in my costume?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Robin sighed, rubbing his stiff neck. "That picture belongs to someone we're trying to track. ID'ing the people with him is the first step to figuring out who he really is."

Kid Flash frowned, holding the picture at arm's length and turning it from side to side as he brought it in close. "Sorry, dude. Doesn't ring any bells with me."

Speedy slipped up beside him and took the picture for his own appraisal. Robin's eyes flickered to him. "Do you recognize the archer?"

"'Fraid not," Speedy shook his head and grinned. "Wicked costume, though. Very sleek. Girl's got style, whoever she is."

Kid Flash zoomed around the room once in a sporadic burst of hyperactivity (a constant risk when working with speedsters) before reappearing over Robin's shoulder as the Titans leader took the photo back. "What about those two in the back? That shield's pretty obvious, dude. You asked Supes or…?"

Robin's eyes narrowed. "I'm not involving them. This is Titans business."

"Hey, Robin."

Cyborg's voice held a specific electric buzz as the intercom clicked on, broadcasting the voice around the Tower. "We've picked up a signal over the communications line. I'm pretty sure it's our mystery kid. I think we can track him."

"I'll be right there," Robin turned on his heels and darted out the door, with Speedy just behind him and Kid Flash breezing past almost instantly. It brought just a bit of a grin onto his face - in his opinion, the more Titans they had on their side, the better.

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

"_Conner…Cassie…Bart, Mia…it's me. I don't know if any of you got here, too, but…I'm here. We need to find each other. Please respond. Robin out. _

_"Conner…Cassie…Bart, Mia…it's me. I don't know if any of you got here, too, but…I'm here. We need to find each other. Please respond. Robin out._

_"Conner…Cassie…Bart, Mia…"_

Robin frowned and muted endlessly looping message to clear the channel for Titans-to-Titans communication. The strange signal - definitely in the same voice as they kid he'd spent two hours trading blows with back on the other side of midnight - had been looping on a frequency just slightly lower than the usual Titans communicators for at least the past hour, if not more. Cyborg and his wondrous technology had managed to narrow the signal's broadcasting area down to a ten-block stretch of town, so the Titans had spread out to search.

Robin flipped the visor of his helmet back into place and kicked up the speed on his motorbike as the light turned green and he rounded the corner of the block. The wind rushing around his head managed to block out most of the sounds of the city, giving him just the white noise he needed to concentrate on Cyborg's pre-mission briefing.

Cyborg had been studying more than the airwaves - he'd scanned the pictures into his hard drive immediately after their first return, and he'd been analyzing them in ways that even Robin's thorough training couldn't. Digital rendering had revealed a distinct 'T'-shaped tower in the distant background of the group shot. According to Cyborg, it _wasn't_ the Titans Tower - at least, not the current version, especially since the location looked nothing like their current residence. He'd shown them blue prints of a modified tower that he had been working on, but specifically noted that the technology needed to create it wouldn't be readily available for another ten years, at the very least.

"HeyguysIthinkIfoundhim!Youbettergetupherequick-"

Robin hit the breaks, screeching to a halt, and lifted a hand to adjusted his communicator. "Kid, slow down. We can't understand you."

Kid Flash's voice stopped for a split second, there was the sound of a deep breath, and then he repeated more slowly. "I think I found your kid in the Robin suit. He's not going anywhere, but you better get up here. And be quiet about it."

Robin glanced down at the screen set into the base of his motorcycle. The blip associated with Kid Flash's communicator was not moving, quite calmly, from a building on the far-right side of their search area. All of the others were within a five minute trip of the location.

"We'll be right there," Robin reported as he revved his cycle. "Stay with him."

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

By the time that Robin made it onto the roof, Cyborg and Speedy had beaten him there, while Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy were just landing. Kid Flash was hovering near the corner of the roof, literally buzzing with carefully-contained energy, his expression somewhere between excited and concerned.

As the others approached, Kid put a finger to his lips and shushed them softly. "Quiet, he's asleep."

That was clear enough, but not quite so obvious that they would have remembered to keep it down had he not reminded them. The kid was curled up in the little niche of the corner, his legs pulled up almost to his chest, resting his head on his arms, with most of his body hidden by the warm folds of his own cape. Black hair fell haphazardly over his face, partially hiding his mask and only adding to the peaceful expression he wore. Leaning against his boot was a small, square, silver device, which was flashing red in the shadows, its 'T'-shaped light being the only thing indicating that it was his Titans communicator. Or at least a form of one.

The moment Starfire's eyes landed on the boy, she let out a little gasp, and her face took on the soft, concerned expression that had Robin convinced she would one day make the universe's greatest mother. "He is so…small."

"I don't think he's that old, Star," Cyborg said softly, keeping his voice low. "He's younger than us, that's for sure. Maybe about Beast Boy's age, but no older than that."

"Seriously?" Beast Boy whistled a bit. "Dude…that's awesome."

Speedy, on the other hand, frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "Yeah, but, I always assumed that Robin…Robin_s_," the Titans leader glared at him a bit for the addition of the multiple, but the archer ignored him, "were supposed to be like, freaky-smart or something. Sleeping out in the middle of the city like this ain't that bright."

"He didn't have a choice," Raven's voice said calmly, her tone emotionless and distant as her empathy brushed the edge of the boy's consciousness. "He's exhausted. If he'd gone any further, he would have passed out."

Kid Flash glanced between the group awkwardly, not spending more than half a second on each face but with the concentration as though he had been studying them (and, with natural aptitude for 'relative time,' he could have been) for an hour. His head and shoulders moved with his body, as though it hurt to stand completely still. "So...whatta we do? We can't just leave him here."

There was a moment of silence as Beast Boy, Starfire and Cyborg glanced at a thoughtful Robin each in turn. Kid Flash shared a panicked looked with Speedy and fidgeted. "We…We _aren't_ going to leave him here, right? He's just a kid."

Robin sighed, shaking his head and silently scolding himself for even thinking of what he'd been ready to do. He was a hero, they were all heroes, and there were just some things that heroes…that _good people_…just didn't do. "You're right. We'll take him back to the Tower."

The others let out relieved breaths. Robin used all his control to ignore that fact. "Cyborg, can you get him down to the T-car without waking him up?"

"No prob," the largest of the Titans grinned, leaning down to scoop the young boy into his arms. Not-Robin didn't wake, but he shifted, curling away from the cold metal and further into the cape.

Robin found himself musing that the kid _must_ have been exhausted. Batman had trained _him _to wake at the slightest change in air. It had been all that kept him alive in some situations.

Speedy glanced at Robin out of the corner of his eyes as Cyborg and the others started their retreat back down to the street level. "And what are you going to do with him now that you've got him?"

Robin pursed his lips, killing the words 'I don't know' before they could be spoken, and followed after his team.

_**TBC…**_

**Note: **Last I heard from the DCU, Tim is currently considered to be "sixteen-going-on-seventeen," which would make him around "just turned sixteen"-ish when his father was killed. As the Teen Titans in TTG technically have no age, I'm putting them on a scale of about 19-16, with Beast Boy being the youngest. That, and I've always thought Tim was small for his age. But that's just me.


	5. Trust in Dreams

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 5: Trust in Dreams**

The boy stirred slightly, rolled over and pawed at one eye through his mask, but didn't quite and settled back into his unknowing sleep.

Robin watched it all without interruption, though he held his breath just a moment when he thought the other might wake. The rustling of sheets was the only sound that echoed in the dark guest room, indeed, probably the only sound in the entire Tower - satisfied with their find, the other Titans had gone to bed, leaving only the crime scanner still running (as usual.) Only his training - and a mild sense of paranoia brought on by his not-quite doppelganger - kept Robin from following suit.

The others - Starfire, in particular - had volunteered to keep watch in his place, but he wouldn't hear of it.

He wanted to figure this kid out for himself.

The kid shifted in his sleep again, tugging uncomfortably at his costume. It was the only movement he'd made since Cyborg had laid him out two hours ago, and even those half-conscious movements were somehow measured and controlled.

Robin frowned and leaned over in his chair, resting his elbows against his knees. One hand reached out to brush a few locks of coal-black hair out of the boy's face with all the precision of a forensic examiner at a crime scene. "Who _are_ you?"

His fingers drifted down the boy's forehead, careful not to more than brush against the other's skin. He reached the covered black domino and hesitated only a moment before slipping his fingers under the edge of the mask and…

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Robin jumped and twisted, pulling his hand back defensively. He let out a breath of relief when he realized it was just Cyborg, leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. "Cyborg…I didn't know you were still up."

The half-metal man grinned a bit, patting his cybernetic arm in a manner that could only be called proud. "Outside of chasing kiddo here all over the city, we've had a pretty easy day. One hour of quick-charge and I'm good to go." The smile faded just a bit as he grew more serious. "Besides, I thought it might be good to help keep an eye on him."

"I've got it under control…"

"Then I'll stick around to keep an eye on you."

Robin glared and let his lip curl up in just a bit of a snarl. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I _mean_, I'm gonna make sure you don't do anything you're going to regret later," Cyborg continued calmly. Out of all the Titans, he was the most used to dealing with Robin in one of his 'ill-humor' moods - having caused more than one of them himself. "You don't trust the kid, I get that, and you're worried 'cause if he _is _from the future, there's no way for us to know what it means for you in that future. But the fact is, we don't know anything about him, and he hasn't done anything that obviously makes him our enemy. Unlike Chronos."

Robin frowned and turned away from his friend, looking back down at the younger kid. "I want to know who he is."

"We all do. But if he's anything like you, he'll prefer keep that quiet as long as he can."

Robin jerked back and twisted, staring at his friend wide-eyed. "I never…"

"Rob," Cyborg's voice remained even and calm, not accusatory, just blank fact. "I've known you for three years. You're my best friend and the best leader the team could ask for. I'd trust you with my life and more. But I don't even know what color your eyes are."

Robin winced, shrinking back the slightest bit. Taking his mask off had never been a real option for him - it was just too much of a risk that one of the others would some day stumble across an old ad for the Flying Graysons and recognize him, pushing his two lives together. "Cyborg, I…"

"I know, man. You've got your secrets," Cyborg looked down at his own steel hands, flexing the metal carpals with a barely-noticeable sigh. "We all do. And that's what I'm trying to tell you. Do you realize how many times we've had you here, just like that kid? How many times you've gotten hurt, been knocked out around us, and how easy it would be to just sneak a peak without you even knowing?"

"Cy…"

"It happens a _lot_, Robin. We've had a lot of chances to see who you are under there," Cyborg's voice and expression remained carefully even, carefully blank. "But we've never done it. Because we know you trust us not to. You _trust_ us."

The Boy Wonder felt thrown for a loop, in a way that his teammates could only really pull of when they had just the right point to make. "What are you trying to say?"

"I'm _saying_ that, no matter what kind of future this kid comes from, he _chose_ to model himself, his superhero life, after _you_," Cyborg stressed the words even more than he had before, driving the crux of his argument home. "That means he looks up to you, Rob. He trusts you enough to base his entire _life_ off an example _you_ set. He really _trusts_ you, Rob.

"I think it'd be wrong to make him feel like he put that trust in the wrong person."

With that, Cyborg fell completely silent, leaning back against the doorframe his arms braces firmly over his chest. Robin let his own hands lower into his lap, contemplating what his teammate had said.

With a soft, resigned sigh, he leaned back in his chair and waited.

**( - ) ( - ) ( - )**

"Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…"

Mother did not have the world's greatest singing voice by any matter of means, but it was warm and soft and soothing and just familiar enough to lull him to sleep, even though he didn't want to.

"When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall…"

He curled further into Mother's warmth and mumbled a wordless protest against the sleep tugging at his eyelids. He didn't _want_ to go to sleep, not yet, he had to stay awake and wait for…

"And down will come baby, cradle and all…"

_Slam._

"Hi honey. I'm home…_finally_."

Father. He tired to reach the voice, but his arms were heavy with sleep and wouldn't listen to him.

"How's Timmy doing?"

"Sound asleep. He'll be mad when he wakes up - he wanted to see you…"

"But it's just too late. I know," a warmth crossed over his forehead as Father rustled his hair, leaning over him to give Mother a kiss. "I'll make it up to him tomorrow. I've got the tickets right here."

"Dear, are you sure he's old enough for something like that…?"

"Sure he is, honey. In fact, the younger the better. All kids love the circus."

_The circus…_

With a sudden jerk, Father's voice and Mother's warmth were gone, replaced by a bone-shattering snap and airless emptiness. He was falling, falling but never hitting the ground, his ears filled with the crowd's frantic screams, his nose with the sickening smells of blood and popcorn, his eyes with the horrified expression that covered the previously-happy face of the Boy-Who-Flies…

His mind leapt to Mother, and then suddenly it was hot, hot and dry, his flesh cracking and burning, his throat drying and tightening, strangling him. His insides twisted and screamed with burning fire, wrenching a wordless cry of pain from his parched, bleeding throat…

Groping through the dark brought a fleeting moment of cool relief, a gentle, soothing color filling his vision. It was plum, no, eggplant - Spoiler, _Stephanie…!_ - and then his heart was the thing that burned. His skin pulled back, tore and bled, his flesh ripped under the pressure of needles, blades, hooks, chains. The wounds hung open, blood flowing, unseen, untended, and the red brought words to his mind, words he would never, ever say, however strongly they had burned inside: _My color, mine, thief, spoiler, I thought you, how could you…?_

And then the red smelled of copper and too-sweet barbeque, and then it was everywhere, everywhere, all over the floor and his hands and his bare legs and everything, _everything_. His voice finally returned and he cried for his father, his hands grasping at that horrible, hard, sharp, golden shape, cutting his hands but never, ever moving, like his father's eyes, those blank, unmoving, lifeless eyes…

With a harsh, ragged gasp, Tim was suddenly awake, and sitting straight up before he could register either of the movements. The first thing he realized, coming completely to consciousness, was that it was very dark. But he was used to the dark, and what little he could see through it indicated that this was a Titan room - was he at the Tower? He must be. Then it was a dream, just one long, terrible, horrible, lonely…

"Hey. _Hey_. You okay?"

Tim jerked at the voice, the voice somewhere between Nightwing and the Boy-Who-Flies, and pulled away from the white, lensed eyes.

"Hey…!"

"Stay. Away." Tim took a deep breath, trying to steady himself with a few deep, measured breaths. "D-Don't…touch me. G-Give me a minute."

The gloved hand retreated back into shadows, the lensed eyes watching him again. Tim took another series of breaths, slowing his heartbeat, falling into a meditative rhythm, before deciding finally that he was calm enough to open his eyes again.

He and not-quite-Dick weren't the only two in the room, he realized. A glowing, red light near the door told him that Cyborg was watching - no, it was Other-Cyborg, his strange glass-covered circuitry glowing a soft blue, refracted off the silver finishing of his arms.

…Right.

_They_ hadn't been a dream. Just the rest of it.

"Where am I?" He asked, tensing. If the chase from before was any indication, he wasn't a guest - he was a prisoner.

"Titans Tower," Other-Cyborg said simply, his voice calm. "You fall asleep on a roof in town. We brought you here after we found you."

Other-Robin…Other-_Dick_…said nothing, but his glare was intensified, amplified by distrust.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why…" Tim paused a moment to consider his next words, his tongue running over his dry lips nervously. "Why bring me back here? You didn't have to. I'm a crook for all you know. You should have taken me to jail."

Other-Cyborg smirked, as though amused by an unspoken joke. "Man, even I know the Bat would _never_ let a criminal in that suit, and even if one got a hold of it, he wouldn't be runnin' around for long."

Subconsciously, Rim touched the hidden-in-plain-sight 'R'-shuriken on his chest. He noticed Other-Dick's eyes narrow further, but chose to ignore it. Even if the tension was hanging between them like a dead bird.

Other-Cyborg sensed the tension and decided to something about it.

Unfortunately, his way of 'doing something about it' was to glance at the clock, declare that it was time to get breakfast started, but he'd take care of it, and promptly retreat out of the room, insisting that the two of them "Talk it out and get to know each other," before closing the door behind him.

It took both of the Robins a full five seconds to realize what he meant before Other-Dick had launched himself at the door. He pushed against it rather uselessly, trying to force it open, but it didn't budge. He pressed his gloved hand against the automatic sensor on the wall, and all he got for his efforts was a high-pitched whirring and buzzing noise as the locks protested his efforts.

Finally, Other-Dick growled, slamming his fist against the door one last time and holding it there, scowling. "Dammit, Cyborg!"

Tim watched the ordeal without question, simply observing. "He locked us in."

"He locked _you_ in."

Tim rolled his head to one side and blinked slowly in the curious bird-like manner he'd adopted primarily because it amused Dick and Alfred. "Can you get out?"

"No."

"Then he locked _us_ in."

Other-Dick glared at him at over his shoulder like a venomous snake ready to pounce. But it wasn't near as tough as Nightwing's glare when he interrogated a murder suspect, and Nightwing's wasn't near as scary as Batman's expression on a daily basis, so Tim was less than impressed. He took a moment to ponder whether Other-Cyborg's reasoning circuits were operating correctly, what with locking his friend in guest room with a possibly-dangerous operative whose loyalties were unknown, but they hadn't started throwing sharp objects yet and _he_ certainly wasn't going to start a fight in enemy territory, so he had to give the alternate Vic the benefit of the doubt.

He sighed a little and began to work himself out of his gloves and boots. This night - morning, dawn, whatever it was - was just going to get longer, and he might as well make himself comfortable enough to ride it out.

_**TBC…**_


	6. Introduction

_**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 6: Introduction**

Robin scowled one last time at the non-responsive door - stupid locked door, stupid Cyborg locking them in, stupid, stupid, _stupid_ - before steeling his resolve and turning to their 'houseguest.' Despite himself, one eyebrow quirked above his mask in curiosity when he saw that the boy had pulled off one of his gloves and was working on getting a grip on the other. "What're you doing?"

The younger 'Robin' glanced at him with a world-class poker face. "Considering going back to sleep if you're going to keep using that tone with me."

"So you're taking your costume off?"

"Duh," the kid rolled his eyes, finally dropping the gloves to the side and moving to his boots. "Do _you_ sleep in your gear?"

Robin nodded once, and the kid stopped moving just to stare at him in disbelief. "Jesus Christ, you're even more obsessive than Bruce."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"I didn't think it was possible."

Robin scowled again and the kid remained stubbornly unaffected by it. He pulled off his boots and cape and disengaged the utility belt, laying it within easy reach. He also removed the 'R' on his breastplate - Robin noticed that the edge of it was strangely sharp - and wiggled out of the top layer of armor to reveal a simple, skin-tight tunic with the same basic design and pattern underneath.

Robin frowned, distracting himself with examining the kid's armor before turning back to the younger boy as he settled on top of the bed again. "You're not taking off the mask?"

"Not on your life," the kid said matter-of-factly. "I'd _like_ to say that whatever… world, time, wherever…I land in, I can always trust the Titans. But I've seen places where that isn't true, and I can't take the risk."

Robin frowned contemplatively, leaning over and resting his arms on his knees. "But you'll take off your weapons and armor?"

"Oh, come on, Dick," the kid smirked, a few pale white teeth glinting in the half-light of the room. "You honestly think I don't have anything left on me?"

Robin blinked once, taking a brief moment to wonder just how much gear this kid carried and what in the world it could all possibly be used for before he narrowed his eyes sharply. "Don't call me that."

"What, 'Dick'?" the kid raised his bare hands almost in a sign of defeat…or possibly contempt. "What do you expect me to call you? In case you can't tell, 'Robin' is going to get a little confusing."

Robin's scowl deepened. "I don't use _that_ name. I haven't used it for years. As far as I and _my team_ are concerned, it doesn't exist."

"Yeah, yeah," the kid pulled his arms behind him and languidly stretched his shoulders. "Secret identity issues, split personalities, whatever…I'm Tim, for what it's worth."

Robin could practically hear the screeching grind of his own mind shifting gears without the clutch. "You're…what?"

"Tim. I'm Tim," he shrugged, rolling his shoulder until it popped comfortably. "Since I know your name, it's only fair."

His face was neutral, almost friendly, but Robin recognized the glint within the lenses of the mask. The kid was leading him on, giving him a tiny bit of information and _dangling_ it. "And you're just going to tell me?"

"There are approximately 300 million people in the general U.S. population, with six million of those residing in Gotham City alone. At any given time, approximately eight percent of that population could, conceivably, go by the nickname 'Tim,'" he smirked like a cat, the grin stretching from ear to ear. "Good luck figuring out which one I am."

Stupid little stuck-up _smart ass_…

Robin didn't grit his teeth, but he did have to bite his tongue the slightest bit. This kid, 'Tim,' was good - real good. He had completely control of the conversation and he not only _knew_ it, he was going to keep batting Robin around like a catnip toy for as long as he wanted, always dancing around the actual _issues_…

"I _will_ figure out who you are."

"You already know who I am," the boy said, keeping his voice soft and simple. "I'm Robin."

"_I_ am Robin."

"Now."

Robin growled, grinding his teeth together, and reached into the folds of his belt to pull out the photographs. He brandished the snapshot of the baseball game, holding it just out of the boy's reach. "Then who is this?"

Tim's poker face slipped away. The muscles around his eyes that were not hidden by his mask relaxed as they widened and his bottom lip trembled just the slightest bit. "Give that back."

_Victory!_

"The kid in the front is you, right? So who's the guy behind you? Maybe a teacher…"

"Give it _back!_" Tim lunged for the picture, but Robin moved just as quickly. He planted his hand against the boy's chest and held him at arm's length, stretching the other one back where the kid couldn't reach. "Give it back, Dick! You have no idea how important that is!"

"I _would_, if you'd told me who's in it!"

"Son of a…"

"_Who is he?"_

"He's my father!"

The boy's voice cracked on the last word and he stopped struggling. Robin stopped as well, the feelings of triumph catching almost painfully in his throat.

Tim looked up at him through the white-out lenses, and Robin could almost imagine the pained eyes behind the mask.

He wondered if they were blue. Like his.

"He's my father. He's dead. Give it back."

Robin's hand moved without him thinking of it, pushing the photo just close enough that Tim could snatch it on the tips of his fingers. He cradled in his hands as gently as one might carry a baby bird, and his expression remained soft and distant.

Robin sat there a while, letting the awkward silence stretch until it finally got to be too much. "What happened to him?"

"He was murdered."

"How long…?"

"Three weeks."

Robin's breath hitched and his brow knitted in confusion. Three _weeks_? It had been three _weeks_ since this kid was orphaned? That just wasn't possible, it couldn't be. _Nobody_ could get that well-trained in three weeks, and Tim talked like he'd been on the job for a _long_ time…

Tim sighed, letting the photo - and the hand that held it - fall into his lap limply. He turned his head so that even his mask wasn't looking at Robin, and the muscles relaxed again as his eyes slipped closed. "Look, it…It doesn't matter. I can't…I _shouldn't_…tell you too much. Not now. I don't think that this world is the same as mine, but we shouldn't take that chance. We don't want to change history."

"But you do come from a good…?"

"Dick," Tim brushed his hair out of his eyes, "I can't tell you. It's too much of a risk."

Robin scowled, leaning back in his chair again and crossing his arms over his chest. "Fine. I'll stop asking."

"That's rather big of you…"

"_If_ you stop calling me that."

Tim glared at him again, exasperated. He sighed, reaching for his utility belt to tuck the picture away again safely. "Find, _Robin_. Whatever you say."

Robin lifted an eyebrow with a little frown. "Just like that?"

"It's not worth fighting over," the boy muttered, tucking the picture away like a precious treasure. "I just want to catch Chronos and go home."

Robin watched Tim for a while longer, looking for any of the tell-tale signs of lying and trickery. He noted the controlled defensive stance and the shifty movements, hiding secrets, but they weren't nervous or jumpy enough to indicate that he had openly lied. The kid…Tim…was telling at least part of the proof.

For now.

Robin turned away from the boy, pulling his communicator from a pocket of his own belt. He felt a little silly using it to communicate inside the Tower, but in this situation, he really didn't have a choice. "Cyborg. We're done for now. Open the door."

"You sure, Robin?" Cyborg's voice was almost coy, accompanied by the hiss of cooking bacon. "Somehow, I think a little more progress can't hurt."

"We're. Done." Robin hissed, grinding his teeth irritably. "Open the door or I'm breaking it down."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tim smirking with amusement. The image made something inside of him twitch, and he growled into the communicator. "_Now_, Cyborg."

"Okay, okay. Yeesh, some people are _so_ pushy," Cyborg mumbled, but a second later there was a click and the door slid open automatically.

Robin cut the communicator signal and glanced at Tim. "You're staying here."

"What, you don't trust me?"

"Not yet."

"I should be mad," Tim leaned back against the mattress, stretching his legs and back with all the control of a professional gymnast. "But I guess it's understandable. Nobody with any sense would just _trust_ some stranger in a mask."

For some reason, the words made something in Robin's mind twitch, just a little, and he stepped out the door. As long as his back was turned, he carefully eased his face back into a blank, hopefully unreadable expression. "We'll send breakfast up soon."

"Take your time," Tim yawned, not quite waving. The distant expression on his masked face was the last thing visible before the door slid closed again and locked him in.

_**TBC…**_


	7. Theories, Rumors and Sure Bets

_**Disclaimer:** I am a college student. own nothing. _

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 7: Theories, Rumors and Sure Bets**

"So, what you're saying is…You think he's Robin's _son_."

"_Nightwing's_ son," Beast Boy corrected with a huge ear-to-pointy-ear grin, brandishing one hand at the messy 'diagram' he'd scribbled across the team's whiteboard. "And he came from the future as part of a top-secret time travel experiment to catch Chronos and…"

"I dunno, man," Cyborg muttered through the bacon and eggs he was rapidly ingesting. "I kinda like the clone theory better."

Kid Flash looked up from his third box of Super-Crunchy Fruity-Os and grinned, revealing that not a speck of sticky color-mush had managed to stick to his teeth. "Nah, that can't be it. If he were a clone, he'd look more like Robin."

"And how would you know?"

"Trust me, I know."

Raven scowled at the boys over the top of her book, her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously in the direction of Beast Boy. "And next you're going to tell me that he's a robot or something."

"Oh, _yeah!_" Beast Boy's eyes lit up at the very idea. "I forgot about that! Good one, Raven!"

Their resident witch groaned vocally, rolled her eyes, and went back to her book.

Starfire frowned just a bit as she floated in from the kitchen and settled onto the couch between Cyborg and Speedy, who cringed away from her breakfast of mustard-covered frozen waffles. "Please - who is this 'he' of whom you are discussing?"

"The new kid," Speedy grinned, holding up his notepad. "You want in on the pool? Odds are looking pretty good for B.B.'s theory, crazy as that sounds…"

"But you are not in a pool…" Starfire blinked. "There is no water."

Speedy groaned and slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand.

At that moment, with a mechanical whir and a buzz, Robin appeared from the main doors, his hair still wet from the shower and his face looking both parts contemplative and disgruntled. Starfire saw him first, and her face lit up. "Robin!"

"Hey, Rob!" Speedy grinned again, brighter than before. "You want in on the pool? We've got some good odds running here."

Robin's eyebrows perked curiously behind his mask. "Odds on what?"

"Who the kid is," Speedy wiggled his eyebrows in that suggestive manner that would have been perverse if present company didn't know that he was only playing around. "Like, _really_ is. Got some good ones flying around. Cyborg thinks he's a clone, B.B. figures he's your son, and Raven thinks he's a robot."

"I didn't say that," Raven growled tersely, even as the color drained straight out of Robin's face.

"My _what_?"

Cyborg and Kid Flash grinned for a few split seconds, then disappeared into their breakfasts to avoid talking. Raven's eyes vanished behind her book, and Speedy just grinned, gesturing like a game show host as Beast boy popped up with his diagram.

"'Kay, look, here's how I figure," Beast Boy grinned widely and pointed to the crudely-drawn 'super-deformed' figure of Chronos, jumping through a swirling purple thing that was apparently supposed to be a time portal. "The Chronos we're chasing is actually from, like, 20 years in the future, and he's been causing a bunch of trouble there before trying to escape here. Naturally, somebody has to come after him, _but_…" he swiveled to several older-looking Titans chibis, looking rather distressed with a large red 'X' drawn across each one them. "Us in the future couldn't send anybody after them that existed in this time, 'cause it would cause a massive tear in the space-time continuum fabric and generally mess a lot of stuff up. _So!_" He spun to a picture of a chibi-fied Nightwing, with an even smaller chibi-Robin - who looked just like their Robin, but with slightly longer hair that fell into his masked eyes. "They have to send Nightwing's kid instead, and needs our help to catch the bad guy and send 'em back!"

Robin stared at the green boy blankly, his mouth falling open. "He's just…a kid."

"Suuuuure he is," Speedy smirked again, lounging back and rubbing his knuckles against his chest. "A perfectly _normal_ kid who gave you guys the run around for five hours last night."

Robin opened his mouth, closed it again, and repeated the motion a few times without any sound actually making it out.

"You know what I really wonder?" Kid Flash cut in, depositing his dishes in the kitchen sink and reappearing a second later. "If Nightwing's the kid's father, who d'ya think his mom is?"

A few sneaky eyes darted across the room to Starfire, who remained completely oblivious to it all as she enjoyed her mustard-soaked breakfast. Robin, on the other hand, noticed every single one.

"You guys are _nuts_," he groaned, falling back onto the couch with one hand pressed over his eyes. "Absolutely _insane_."

"Well, you know, dude…" Cyborg grinned, tapping his chin in a contemplative manner. "We've never really gotten a good look at him, so for all we know…"

Robin groaned again. "For all we know, he could be anything."

"Like a clone!" Beast Boy grinned again.

"Or a robot," Kid Flash added. "Or some kinda inter-dimensional counterpart, like that 'Larry' dude."

"Or an evil twin, or a psychic astral-projection from the future," said a voice from the kitchen, remaining infuriatingly calm even as it slid into, "Now who're we talking about, again?"

A dumb silence fell over the room, broken only by a light _pop_ as a pair of blueberry-filled pastries jumped out of the toaster. They were plucked out of the appliance by a bare hand, which was quickly re-gloved after the snacks were deposited on a paper plate. Seconds later, the strange not-Robin appeared and hopped into a barstool like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Robin, their real Robin, sat straight up and pointed at the boy accusingly. "YOU! You're not supposed to be here!"

"Well, when you said you'd bring breakfast, I didn't think you meant two hours later," the boy shrugged, nibbling coyly on the edge of a pop-tart. "If you really wanted me to stay put, you should've at least left something to read."

Robin stood, gritting his teeth in annoyance. This _kid_… "How'd you get out?"

"Hacked the lock."

"No way," Cyborg interrupted, his voice carrying a distinct tone of disbelief. "All the door locks in the Tower are tied into the main security system. You'd have set off every alarm in the building if you tried that!"

"Yeah, about that…" Other-Robin polished off a pastry and pulled a palm pilot out of a pocket of his belt. "You've got a hole in your firewall that's exposed every twenty-two and half minutes or so. I can show you where it is and you can patch it up however you want."

Cyborg raised an eyebrow curiously, standing to look over the kid's shoulder. "You can read that kind of programming?"

"Sure," the kid grinned. "I learned from the best."

"Huh," Cyborg rubbed the back of his head, taking the little machine from the boy and watching it intently. "Color me impressed…Not bad, uh, 'Robin.'"

Raven glanced up from her book, especially as _their_ Robin's annoyance became practically visible to her empathetic eyes. "That's going to get a little confusing."

"Yeah, too many Robins flapping around," Speedy agreed, stretching all his limbs as he stood and wander over to join Cyborg and their 'visitor.' "We gotta figure out what to call this kid. How 'bout 'Robbie'?"

The kid frowned. "Uh, no."

"I know, I know!" Beast Boy chimed in jumping over the back of his chair to flap over the group in the form of a tiny bird. "How 'bout 'Sparrow'?"

A raised eyebrow was added to the frown. "'Sparrow'?"

There was a rush of wind, and Kid Flash was suddenly added to the crowd, making the mini-Robin shift uncomfortably. "Youknowguys, Redbird would sound kinda cool, whattya think about-"

"Tim."

Again, the chattering fell silent and they turned to the visitor as he disengaged himself from their group, backing away a few steps. "Just call me Tim. It's my name."

"Really?" Beast Boy said blankly, disappearing for a moment as he shifted back to his normal form. "Like, your really real name? Really, really real?"

"Well, _yeah_," the kid backed up a bit more, the tenseness in his muscles easy to see without the layers of armor he'd been wearing. "It's Timothy, if you want to get completely technical, but just call me Tim."

"Timothy," Starfire smiled, lifting off of the couch to float over to him with a slight smile on her face. "It is…quite nice to finally be introduced to you, formally. I wish to thank you for assisting me last night against the Chronos."

Tim glanced at her with a small curve of his lip that could have been a smile, or maybe a trick of the light. "Don't mention it, Starfire. Really."

"There is so much that I would wish to ask you…"

"_That_ would not be wise," Raven interrupted, closing her book with an authoritative snap. She stood gracefully, gazing at the gather Titans coolly. "I don't know where he came from, but I know that he doesn't belong in this world at this time. We don't know how his timeline is related to ours, and we can't risk changing the future."

Tim nodded, just slightly. "My thoughts exactly."

"Auuuuuuuuw…" Beast Boy's voice rose into a whine. "C'mon, it can't be _that_ bad."

Raven narrowed her eyes. "I _assure_ you that it can."

"What if we just guess stuff, and he tells us if we get it right. Would that be okay?"

"No."

"Or we could…"

"_No."_

Robin sighed, sinking back into the sofa cushions and pressing his hands over his face. The muffled sound of his own breathing against the thick material of the gloves blocked out the noise of bickering Titans and left him alone with his thoughts.

For some reason, his mind drifted to Beast Boy's 'theory' and stuck there like flypaper. It was stupid, just another of B.B.'s crazy, science-fiction induced ideas that shouldn't be taken seriously….but…

The kid knew his _name_. He'd never told anyone his real name, not even any of his friends. And the kid's reluctance to tell him anything, absolutely anything about the future might mean that…no one would want to prevent their own birth…and that _picture…_

_"It's my father. He's dead."_

_"He was murdered."_

Robin lowered his hands just enough to look over at his younger doppelganger without actually exposing his eyes. In the light, he could see the similarities between them - dark hair, slight build, precise training echoing with their every move… His skin was paler, though, no dark undertones that indicated any kind of Romani heritage, but he could almost say that it could have been from the mother…

"_My father is dead…"_

Robin swallowed, suddenly finding it just a little hard to do so. It was stupid to think this way, it didn't prove anything, and lots of people had dark hair. It was a crazy possibility…

…But it _was_ a possibility. And Beast Boy's crazy theories had been right before.

He just had to hope that this was not one of those times.

**( - )**

"Rackin'-frackin' little…brats…"

Chronos's voice echoed off the walls of the long-abandoned apartment building, creating a chorus with the electric buzzing of his hastily-stolen hand-held power tools. The occasional flash of light appeared as the makeshift replacement component he was working on sparked, but it was unnoticeable to the day-lit streets far below the tightly-closed window.

"Stupid kid…breakin' my stuff like he's the one who stole it. Who's he think he is, pawin' at me like that? Must'a been raised in a cave…" Chronos hissed and spat over his shoulder in disgust. "When I get my hands on him, I'm gonna…Ye-ooow!"

An electric shock rolled up his arm, jarring the man's entire body and completely frying the little piece of equipment that he'd been pouring over.

"Auuuuuuuuw, screw this!" Chronos swore and hurled the item away from him. "I am _never _gonna get this stupid thin tuh work!"

The component, as a testament to its shoddy workmanship, the quality of its stolen materials and the welding abilities of several hundred volts of pure electricity, stayed in one place as it hit and skittered across the stone floor. With a soft _clack_, it came to rest along the wall beside the door, which opened suddenly to announce the entrance of a new figure.

"Well," the stranger said, reaching down to lift the component into a black-gloved hand. "Sounds like you're having a bit of a problem."

Chronos jumped, twisting and flinging the top of his shoddy 'worktable' - the rotted bathroom door supported by a pair of saw horses - to the ground. "Who…Who are you?"

"A possible friend," the mechanical voice said, in a way that indicated he was smirking behind the blank white skull mask. "Call me Red X. Now, how about you tell me all about this little…problem…of yours?"

_**TBC…**_


	8. Arguments

I still hate my chapter endings. Every single time, I hate them.

_**Disclaimer: **I am a college student. own nothing._

**Brothers Together**

**Chapter 8: Arguments**

Tim groaned, rubbing his temples and willing the frustration headache to fade despite the constant interference to the contrary. Beast Boy hadn't given up on his little quest, he was continuing to point out more and more inexplicable ways to wheedle information about 'the future' out of Tim. Alternate-Raven was getting more than a little frustrated.

"But what if we…"

"No."

"But we could…"

"No."

"But it wouldn't…"

_"No."_

Beast Boy pouted, crossing his arms over his chest and jutting his lower lip out as he plopped back on the couch. "Fine. But I think we should at _least_ be able to ask a couple of…"

_"Absolutely not."_

"…About stuff we already _know_, sheesh!"

Raven narrowed her purple eyes at him over the top of her book. "If you already know, you wouldn't need to ask."

"C'mon, he's a smart kid!" Beast Boy insisted. "He'd know what would mess stuff up, no problem."

"Drop it, B.B.," Cyborg warned in a tone that indicated he was far more amused by the situation than he wanted to let on. "He's already said he's not going to mess with it…"

"I'm right here, you know," Tim muttered from the couch.

"…So it's better to just _drop_ it."

Tim sighed and glanced at alternate-Dick, who had a strange expression on his face. Tim had enough experience with reading masked eyes to know that alter-Dick was pretending to be watching 'B.B.' and Raven argue, but was actually looking to Tim behind his white-out lenses. The gaze had a cautious, worried feeling that made Tim wish he'd heard the opening phrases of their conversation about his origin. Alter-Dick didn't really trust him, Tim wasn't going to delude himself about that, but now there was something _more_ there…

"Timothy?"

He glanced up at the accent voice and let his guard slip. This Starfire was rather gentle, not even her presence as demanding as his Kori'ander. "Yes, Starfire?"

"You seem to be somewhat distressed," Star said softly, hovering a few inches off the ground. "Perhaps your displacement in time has made you uncomfortable?"

"I'm fine, don't worry about me," Tim sighed and stood up, letting his cape fall around him comfortingly. He moved to the window calmly and looked out over the bay. "What city is this? I don't recognize this skyline."

"You're in Jump City, man," Cyborg said brightly. "Best city on the West Coast."

"'Jump City'?" Tim frowned. "Never heard of it."

"No joke?" Speedy asked, quirking an eyebrow. "How about Steel City?"

Tim muffled a bit of a snort, just out of common courtesy. "You're joking, right?"

"No!"

Beast Boy popped his head up over the top of the couch. "Dude, then where is your Tower at?"

Tim hesitated a moment, then shrugged. What could it hurt? "San Francisco."

"San Fran!"

"And the original was in New York," Tim sighed. "No big deal."

There was a rush of wind and then Kid Flash appeared at Tim's side. He pushed a photograph into Tim's line of sight - the group shot of _his_ friends, in front of _their_ Tower. "That's this Tower, right? In San Fran? And these guys are all Titans, like you, right?"

"Yeah…" Tim reached out slowly and took the photo back. "But I don't know how much I should tell you…"

"Well, you don't hafta tell us where they came from or anything!" Beast Boy chimed in eagerly. "I mean, we already know they're there, so you can just tell us who they are and leave it at that, _right?"_

Tim sighed and placed one hand against his forehead, glancing away from the expectant green eyes and towards Raven. The spell caster looked like she was at the end of her rope and summoned another book to start her research up again. Tim turned back to the group, raising his hands in defeat.

"Okay, fine," he sighed, glancing back at the picture again. "Yes, these are my friends - _my _Teen Titans. Who are you so curious about?"

Kid Flash snorted. "Oh, I dunno, thekidinmysuit?"

"He's my Kid Flash," Tim shrugged. "The second one."

"But…But where did I…?"

"I can't tell you."

"Okay, fine," Speedy jabbed a finger at the yellow-hooded girl. "Who's the chick with the arrows?"

"The second Speedy."

"Your Speedy's a girl?!"

"Yup," a little smirked crawled over Tim's face. "She's a natural."

"But what happened to…"

"I _can't_ tell you!"

Starfire's expression became serious as she took off across the room to land beside Tim. "Timothy, if I might inquire…"

Tim turned to her with a soft smile, relieved to have someone at least somewhat calm to talk to. "Yes, Starfire?"

"Do you know of the Nightwing?"

Alternate-Dick's head shot up and Tim blinked. "How do you know about Nightwing?"

"Then you _do_ know him!" Starfire cheered, seeming pleased, and Tim swore in the back of his mind at the slip. "Please tell me, has he been well?"

"He's…fine," Tim blinked several more times, as if the strange conversation would just disappear if he willed it hard enough. "But I don't understand…how do you know…?"

"Let's just say we've met," Beast Boy grinned, a pair of sharp canines glinting in the light.

Tim blinked again and pressed his fingers against his forehead to soothe the tension headache. "Oh-kay. I guess I asked for that…"

"So, how do _you_ know him?" Beast Boy pressed, nudging Tim's side and raising one eyebrow in an expression that Tim wasn't sure he wanted to grasp the implications of. "You guys, like, related or something?"

"You could…" Tim swatted the green elbow that had been bruising his side, "…say that."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Alternate-Dick pale a few more shades. The view was blocked, however, by Speedy planting himself on the couch on Tim's opposite side, trapping him in place with a cock smirk that was all-too-clearly searching for some 'juicy' tidbit. "And how, exactly, could we say that? Like, what, is he your old man?"

Tim choked on hi own saliva at that statement, coughing for a full minute before he finally got it under control. "My…wha-?"

"Your old man, your pop," Speedy's grin widened as he leaned in, wrapping one arm around Tim's shoulders and pulling at a lock of the dark hair. "'Cause you know, from what I've been hearing, you two are an _awful_ lot alike. Same hair, same fighting style, same gadgets and stuff…"

"Nightwing…my…No!" Tim jerked out of the grip with a disgusted expression, still trying to process his answer. "He's not my…ew! Just, no!"

Beast Boy's pointed ears dropped like a disappointed puppy. "So he's _not_ your dad?"

_"No!"_ Tim insisted as he jerked away, his face twisted up in a scowl that was almost starting to show the slightest bit of amusement. "Jeez, I'm not _that_ young! He doesn't have anything like that, besides, Roy's the one who's got a-"

He trailed off, realizing that he was saying too much. There was an awkward silence, until Starfire piped up. "'The one who has got a…' what?"

"Who's 'Roy'?" Beast Boy asked, his face blank.

"I think I need to lie down," Speedy muttered, and flopped onto the couch cushions that Tim had left empty. The smaller Robin rubbed the back of his head and looked somewhat guilty for the slip, even if no one had really understood it.

"Okay, that's enough," Robin, looking a bit more under control than he had been before, though still slightly tense, finally pushed away from the wall. He crossed the room to reach to bank of monitors that were set up against the wall. "We don't have time to be messing around. Right now, we have more important things to worry about, like finding Chronos."

"Easier said than done," Cyborg shrugged, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "For all we know, he's already time-hopped into the next century."

"I don't think he _can_."

All eyes turned to Tim again and Raven pursed her pale lips, raising a single slender eyebrow. "How can you be sure?"

"When we were fighting, I pulled something out of his machine," Tim dug into the evidence pocket of his utility belt and pulled out the flat silver disk. "He freaked when he realized it was missing, and when he escaped, he only jumped through space, not time. I don't think he can time-travel without it."

Cyborg hummed to himself curiously, taking the piece from Tim and holding it up to the light. "Sounds like you yanked he chronological stabilizer. If he tried to jump with this, he could wind up anywhere. Er…any_-when_."

"So, as long as he's missing that, he hasn't left this time," Tim added, noting, with some amusement, that Beast Boy and Kid Flash were looking more than a little baffled. "And he's probably going to come after it."

"Unless he builds a new part…"

"That's unlikely," Time smirked. "I don't know what it's like here, but he's got a bit of a reputation back home for being something of a bumbling moron. He stole all of his technology, doesn't know a thing about actually using it."

"Good," the Titan's Robin cleared his throat to draw the attention back to himself. "That means we can predict his next move and plan for it."

"We can stick around ifyouwant," Kid Flash suggested with a grin, obviously looking forward to the offer.

"That isn't necessary," Robin's face remained blank. "You've got your own cities to worry about."

"No worries, man," Speedy chimed in, though he still sounded a bit ill. "With Bee and Aqualad and the twins, Steel City's in good hands."

"Yeah, and Jinx can handle Keystone with no problem!"

Robin's expression hardened. "I _said_ it wasn't necessary."

Tim frowned.

"Anyway, the first thing to do is figure out where Chronos has disappeared to," Cyborg twisted around to the nearest console, punching in various commands that flickered across the screen. "I'll set the scanners to look for any anomalies in the city's electrical grid. He might still be trying to test the thing."

"And Raven, you keep looking for a way to get the kid back home without that thing," Robin instructed. The sorceress nodded and lost herself in her books again. "The rest of us should start buckling down and preparing in case something unexpected happens."

Starfire sighed and took to the air again. "As you wish, Robin."

She slipped out the door, presumably heading outside to absorb sunlight in preparation for the upcoming battle. Beast Boy shifted into a dog and stretched out on the floor of the living room, apparently deciding that the best thing he could do right now was get some rest.

There was another localized rush of wind and suddenly Kid Flash reappeared at Robin's side. "Are you _sure_ you don't want us to stick around. 'Cause we totally can, you know."

Robin put one hand on the redhead's yellow-clad shoulder, his expression friendly, but not entirely honest. "No, thank you. We'll be fine. Thanks for your help, but I think we can handle things here for now."

Speedy kicked his legs and jumped over the back of the church. "Whatever you say, Rob-man."

Robin nodded at the two visiting Titans as they left the room, turning his masked eyes to the screens. He folded his arms over his chest as he contemplated the information, taking it all in at once. There had to be something here that they could use, something that didn't add up or was out of place, some clue, however small….

"Hey."

He turned at the tapping on his shoulder and found himself face-to-masked-face with Tim. The younger Robin had a sour look on his face, and it automatically put the elder in a bad mood. "What?"

"We need to talk - privately?"

Robin narrowed his eyes at the kid, ignoring the curious glances that Cyborg and Beast Boy were shooting them out of the corner of their eyes. They had a bit of a glare-off for a few minutes, before Robin finally made a silent move for the hallway and Tim followed after.

The moment the doors had slid closed behind them, Robin turned on his heels and glared at the newcomer. "What?"

Tim, like a good Robin, was unfazed. He crossed his arms over his chest and settled into the shadows of the unlit hall as though he belonged there. "What is your problem?"

"I don't _have_ a problem," Robin retorted, fighting down the defensive shudder of tensing muscles that rolled up his spine.

"Could've fooled me, you've only been glaring holes in the back of my head all morning," Tim shifted, adjusting his cape so that it fell around him more comfortably. "I understand that you're uncomfortable with this whole thing, we're in a seriously weird situation here. But we're just going to have to deal with it for a while."

Robin pursed his lips together. He was being lectured by a _kid_. A kid in _his_ costume. "I'm aware of that."

"Right…" Tim quirked his head to one side like a bird contemplating whether the tasty-looking seed was worth hopping into the stranger's hand. "Look, this is going to seem kind of rude, but _somebody_ has to ask…"

Robin shrugged wordlessly, prodding him forward.

"What are you hiding from?"

Robin jerked back before he could control the reaction. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"What are you _hiding_ from?" Tim repeated evenly. "What are you trying to keep out? Why are you always hiding behind that mask?"

"The same reason that _you_ do," Robin snapped, nipping his tongue to remind himself to keep his temper in check.

The response seemed to placate Tim somewhat, though he was still watching Robin cautiously. He crossed his arms over his chest as they studied each other, then the younger Robin sighed. "I'm just trying to…_understand_. Why haven't you told them?"

"Who?"

"The other Titans. Your friends."

Robin's frown darkened. "Told them what?"

"Who you are."

"They know exactly who I am."

"Really," Tim frowned at him the same way that Batman did when he was dissatisfied with an answer, and it made Robin's blood boil. "They know about the circus?"

The color drained out of Robin's face, but he kept his exterior cool. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then they _don't_ know!" Tim snapped. "They don't know anything about you!"

"What, you think you do?"

Tim looked at him with a glare that had to be lifted straight from Bruce. "I know everything about you."

Robin bit his tongue again. "Bullshit. There's no way."

"There _is_ a way," Tim repeated, his voice lowering to cover a secret. "I _know_ you, I knew for years, before you knew me. I watched, I figured it out. Dick, I…"

"I _told_ you not call me that!"

Tim's calm façade finally cracked - he looked ready to strangle his counterpart. "It's just your name!"

"My name is Robin," the Titan's leader bit out.

"It wasn't always like that," Tim stepped back and took a deep breath. "Don't you…can't you understand? You can't forget where you came from…you can't just forget that. Back then, you…you were my _hero_…"

The older Titan crossed his arms over his chest, scowling as he tried to understand the younger's words. "Robin is _supposed _to be a hero."

"_Not_ Robin. _You,_" Tim insisted, looking about ready to throw in the towel and anything else he could get his hands on. "It was never about Robin, never about Batman, it was about _you_. You were the one I followed, the one I wanted to be like, and I can't believe you'd want to hide that!"

Robin blinked once, then again, the sound almost audible in the deafening silence. His mouth opened and closed a few times, hoping that an appropriate response would find its way out, but none came.

Tim glared at him for a while, giving him a chance to defend himself. Finally, he sucked in an aggravated breath and shoved forward, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. "Nothing to say? Fine. Just, _fine_."

He shoved past the other Robin almost viciously and stormed off. The Titan's leader followed his path with his eyes, finally giving up on the lost words. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Oh boy…"

"Dude, that was _nuts_."

Robin jumped and twisted around. Beast Boy and Cyborg were staring at him from the cracked living room doors, and the realization drained the color from his face. "How…How much did you hear?"

Beast Boy quirked an eyebrow at him. "What, man, you got something you didn't _want_ us to hear?"

Cyborg knocked their green-skinned teammate up the side of the head for his lack of tact. "We only came in for the end. That's all."

"Oh…" Robin muttered, letting his cape fall around his body protectively. "Good."

The other Titans glanced at each other and shrugged. Beast Boy disappeared back into the living room again. Cyborg stepped out and approached Robin calmly. "So…what're we going to do?"

"About him?" Robin sighed, glancing down the hall distractedly. "I don't know…"

"Actually, I was talking about Chronos."

Robin blinked, then remembered what he was supposed to be doing and forced the serious expression back onto his face. "Right. Of course. We need to get back to the monitors…"

He pushed past Cyborg without much enthusiasm and headed back for his original post. Cyborg watched his friend out of the corner of his non-electric eye, clicking his tongue thoughtfully. Whatever the kid had said, it had really ruffled Robin's feathers…

He shook the thought out of his head and went back to work. As the Fearless Leader had said, they had more important things to be working on. Whatever problems Robin - the Robin_s_ - were having were just going to have to wait.

**__**

TBC

… 


End file.
